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NOW AVAILABLE: GalCiv III 5th Anniversary Update and Worlds in Crisis DLC

Galactic Civilizations III 5th Anniversary Update and Worlds in Crisis DLC are Now Available

[h2]Experience new world crises, planet types and traits, plus visual and balance improvements with v4.0[/h2]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1277830

Every world has a story, and it’s up to you to decide how it ends.

In Worlds in Crisis, you will encounter a host of new world events with ideological choices that you will have to resolve. Several new planet types and over a dozen new planet features also await you, breathing new life into the game for old-time Galactic Civilizations players while offering exciting options for people picking up the game for the first time.

The free v4.0 update adds huge performance increases and makes vast visual improvements to the game’s planets, both on the surface and from orbit. Thanks to the numerous feedback we've received from fans, a lengthy list of balance and AI improvements are also in v4.0. To see what's new, check out the complete changelog for the update at the bottom of the post!


[h2]Worlds in Crisis Features[/h2]
[h3]New Planetary Crises[/h3]
Ruling a galaxy is tough work, full of perilous and precarious decisions that must be made on a regular basis. As you explore and expand, you may encounter worlds struggling with crises from planetary mutations, to raging pandemics, to murderers on the loose, and much more.

Some of the troubles you might encounter are:
  • Native intelligent primates - We’re not monkeying around here. A newly terraformed continent reveals quite a surprise.
  • Mad Governor - Just what is going on here? Mass hallucinations, city-wide parties, and people disappearing off the streets make for an unusual adventure.
  • Notorious Smugglers - Will this smuggler have a change of heart, or go back to his old ways? That’s entirely up to you.
  • And more! - A host of new choices await you. Will you handle them benevolently, pragmatically, or malevolently?





[h2]New Planet Types[/h2]
Explore worlds sterilized by mad scientists, landscapes littered with ancient battlefields, and tranquil planets overflowing with milk, honey - and whatever that blue stuff is that the Altarians drink.
Sterile World: This planet isn’t meant for housing life, but it’s perfect for running certain “controlled” experiments…
  • Fertile World: Abundant with life and foliage, it’s the perfect planet for feeding an entire empire.
  • Tranquil World: Beautiful and serene, this place is just waiting to be overrun by retirees.
  • Volcanic World: Abundant power is nice, but boy do the earthquakes get old.
  • Fissured World: Deep and abundant fissures may hide secrets within the planet’s core. Dive deep and uncover them.
  • Bombarded World: Boiling calderas and abundant geothermal energy are all that remain here after the Precursors’ ancient wars.





[h3]New Planet Features[/h3]
New islands, continents, and landmasses leave you with more options as you explore and colonize planets. You’ll enjoy beautiful shorelines, vibrant color, and careful detail on each planet that you visit. There are also several new worlds to explore which offer new and exciting bonuses for those brave enough to colonize them.
Some of the new planet features you’ll find in Worlds in Crisis are:
  • Volcanic Rifts: If you can’t handle the heat, then get off the planet! Mine below the surface to extract heat to use in power production.
  • Thriving Reef: Dive into a world of abundant reefs and wide oceans. Truly a magical sight to behold.
  • Floating Mountains: Mountains in the sky - well, that’s new. Studying this bizarre land feature could bolster your research.
  • Permanent Rainbow: We’ve finally found the rainbow connection! The beauty of this world improves the mood of the local populace.
  • Giant Mushrooms: Exploring this world should be fun...gi. These freakishly large mushrooms present a generous food source.
  • Gold Fields: It’s so shiny! Fields on this world are rich with precious gold.
  • And more: It’s a vast galaxy. Over a dozen other planetary types are out there, so start exploring!







[h2]v4.0 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Better Looking Worlds[/h3] Both from the surface and from orbit, planets received a facelift (or continent lift). We've introduced many new islands, continents, and landmasses used by the planet generation system. We've also improved our material system to improve shorelines, add more color, and add more detail to planets.

[h3]Fixes[/h3]
  • Fixed various bugs that caused autoskip not to, you know, bloody auto skip!
  • Fixed an issue where Prototype Hyperdrive said it needed Promethion, but it actually needed Anti-matter (it now requires Promethion correctly).
  • Fixed an issue where the Thullium Hull Reinforcement required Durantium.
  • Fixed an issue where the United Earth faction wasn't using the correct Map Color, UI Color or Appearance.
  • Fixed an issue where some events weren't changing population correctly (thanks to Old Spider for the fix!)
  • Fixed a crash when using debug commands to trigger events out of order.
  • Fixed a typo in the Nanite Fabricator description.
  • Fixed the Illegal Cloning event Pragmatic growth bonus.
  • Fixed the Illegal Cloning event Malevolent Population bonus.
  • Fixed the UP Resolution War Fine to have a duration.
  • Fixed the Mowling duplicate intro screen text.
  • Updated the Cultural Beacon description to state that it allows the training of celebrities.
  • Fixed an issue keeping the Nanite Transmitter Complex from being buildable.
  • Fixed an issue where Space Monsters might not appear on some events if you don't have Crusade installed.
  • Fixed an issue where players wouldn't receive credits in trades
  • Fixed a stuck turn if you continued playing after winning the game.


[h3]Balance[/h3]
  • Occasional planet frequency increased from 1 to 1.2
  • Occasional habitable planets increased from 20 to 30
  • Occasional minable planets change increased from 0.15 to 0.2
  • Occasional Durantium asteroid increased from 0.2 to 0.3
  • Common planet frequency increased from 1.25 to 1.5
  • Common Habitable planets increased from 30 to 50
  • Common Asteroids increased from 0.08 to 0.10
  • Common Min asteroids in a field increased from 2 to 3
  • Common Blackholes increased from 5% to 7%
  • Common minable planet chance increased from 0.25 to 0.33
  • Common Durantium asteroid increased from 0.3 to 0.4
  • Abundant blackholes increased from 10% to 12%
  • Abundant Minable planet chance increased from 0.4 to 0.6
  • Abundant Durantium increased from 0.4 to 0.5
  • Non-Aggression treaty minimum relation requirement reduced from 4 to 3.
  • Asteroid base production reduced from 1 to 0.5
  • Computer Core cost increased from 32 to 40
  • Industrial Center cost increased from 30 to 40
  • Colonization Center cost increased from 30 to 40
  • Administrative Center now available at the start of the game
  • Administrative Center admins provided increased from 1 to 2
  • Administrative Center influence increased from 1 to 5
  • Administrative Center now provides adjacency bonuses for Research, Manufacturing and Tourism
  • Substantially more fertile tiles added to planets.
  • Ministry of Alien Affairs now awards an administrator.
  • Xeno Commerce tech now provides 5 trade routes (instead of 3)
  • Cultural exchange increases global influence per turn by 2 (instead of 1)
  • Galactic Trade now provides 5 more trade routes (instead of 2)
  • Updated score system to differentiate scoring more between victory types.
  • Player scores are higher so that we can have more nuance between performance in the future.


[h3]AI[/h3]
  • Adjusted AI players that have sufficient resources to focus more on larger ship construction.
  • AI wakes up to ascension victory faster.
  • AI weighs trade with target player more so when deciding who to attack.
  • Reduced AI bonuses at higher difficulties.
  • New AI evaluator for handling ships that have destinations.
  • Civs that want to conquer the galaxy will more aggressively increase their diplomatic stance to do so.
  • AI is more flexible in what weapons it will research.
  • AI takes more account of what resources it has when deciding what to focus on.
  • Constructor won't ask for new orders if destination is blocked.
  • Assault ships will ask for new orders if destination becomes defenseless.
  • AI more circumspect about attacking if the enemy fleets / planet / starbase is substantially stronger.
  • Default Ai difficulty lowered form Gifted to Beginner.


[h3]Performance[/h3]
  • Block some unneeded planet screen UI calls.
  • New function created for AI movement that is more efficient on large maps.
  • Improved the performance of recalculation when improvements are place.
  • Blocked AI treasury evaluation checks if the AI doesn't have any money (a small improvement but it adds up).
  • Optimized player calculation.
  • Added a new timer threshold for updates occurring more than once per second.
  • Updated AI to be able to "see" planets and asteroids if the FOW is exposed to it already rather than recalculating (just like humans). It still can't see if it's under FOW or if it's a ship that is in exposed FOW.
  • Reduced the frequency at which map objects are updated.
  • Optomization for systems with more than 4 logical threads.
  • Game Timer added to control how often we update Human awareness level drawing.
  • Removed hidden (but CPU intensive) UI calls when soaking is on.
  • Disabled UI screen calc updates if soak is on.
  • AI doesn't need to recalcuate its virtual UI.
  • Dramatically reduced the distance before the pathfinder starts requiring way points.
  • Fixed bug where passing an invalid ID would simply crash the Object Finder rather than, you know, returning a NULL pointer.
  • AI players don't need to update their virtual UI for removing and adding things to their build queue.
  • Citizen units when they arrive at a destination planet now set a dirty flag to recalc rather than force recalculating all stats right then and there.
  • Game update threshold lowered from 30ms to 10ms for better visual fidelity.
  • Made Galaxy Destruction faster (most noticeable when you go to load a save from within a game).


[h3]UI[/h3]
  • Fixed typos.
  • Clearer description of some planetary improvements.

COMING SOON: Galactic Civilizations III: Worlds in Crisis DLC & v4.0 Update

Galactic Civilizations III: Worlds in Crisis and Major v4.0 Update Announced

[h2]Experience new world crises, planet types and traits, plus visual and balance improvements with v4.0[/h2]



[h3]GalCiv III - Worlds in Crisis DLC[/h3]
Stardock announced the new Worlds in Crisis DLC and free v4.0 update for its massive space sandbox 4X strategy game, Galactic Civilizations III today.



Worlds in Crisis introduces several new world events with ideological choices, new planet types, and over a dozen new planet features. Long-time players will find many new strategic options while players picking up the game for the very first time will also encounter exciting new experiences.

[h3]v4.0 Update[/h3]
The free v4.0 update adds huge performance increases and makes vast visual improvements to the game’s planets, both on the surface and from orbit. A massive list of additional balance and AI improvements also accompany v4.0, which is already in opt-in. The current changelog is available in the forums.



In Worlds in Crisis, players may encounter worlds struggling with crises from planetary mutations, to raging pandemics, to murderers on the loose, and much more. Each crisis tells a planet’s story and the player’s decisions on how to handle them will determine how it resolves in the end.



There are also several new planet types to explore, offering new and exciting bonuses for those brave enough to colonize them. Players might encounter a sterile planet that isn’t meant for housing life, but is suited for the experiments of a mad scientist, or a beautiful and serene tranquil type world, perfect for retirement and tourism. New islands, continents, and landmasses provide many new options.

“Our community provided most of the feedback that shaped v4.0,” said Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. “Thanks to them, we were able to review and optimize everything in order to make things run faster. We also worked in some performance improvements while still making the game look better than ever.”

[h2]The Worlds in Crisis DLC and 4.0 update is coming soon![/h2]

GalCiv III Dev Journal: April 2020

We are on the road to v4.0.

[h2]It's hard to believe that GalCiv III was released nearly five years ago.  We've made a lot of changes since then.[/h2]

Version 4.0 is being designed to bring a ton of new features, we won't go over all the changes here but instead will take you on a bit of a guided tour.

Most of the changes are for users of Retribution which is the latest expansion.  If you don't have that, I highly recommend getting it.

[h3]Turn 1[/h3]
On your first turn you're going to likely notice some subtle but important changes.




First, more food.  There are a lot more fertile tiles in general that you can use either for farming or plow away to build other things.




There is also an Administrative Center that you can have 1 per planet with.  It gives you 2 admin points but it's also useful because it enhances adjacent structures.




There has also been a slight tweak to the costs of planetary improvements (on Retribution).  You also end up with a fuller set of choices. 
 



Not only have asteroid fields been made bigger but Durantium is more common as well.




Technologies have been tweaked so that more administrative points are handed out and a lot more trade routes are handed out.  For instance (Retribution), Xeno Commerce now provides 5 trade routes instead of 2.

[h3]Early game changes[/h3]


Resources like Promethion are somewhat more common as well.




On the other hand, while we've added more asteroids, we've reduced the amount of raw resources mining bases give from 1.0 to 0.50.  As many know, by late game, a disproportionate amount of raw resources ends up coming from the asteroids which was not the intent.  

Instead, because food is so much more common, players will tend to have much larger populations which do provide, over time, more production.




Planets themselves have gotten a bit of a make-over.  More interesting layouts and more interesting cosmetics.

[h3]Even Mars.[/h3]


And this is all in the first 20 turns or so.   We will discuss more as we get closer.

[h3]Highlighted feature[/h3]
A lot of users have asked for the ability to turn OFF the colonies auto-upgrading structures.



v4.0 Coming in May!

GalCiv III: Dev Journal - March 2020

[h2]I found a magic planet.[/h2]



It’s not that it is a class 20 planet – it only started as a class 14 and I’ve upgraded it since. It is that it had 6 fertile tiles with 5 of them ready to have something amazing placed in the middle. In this case, Kimberly’s Refuge. Combined with the planet being a fertile world the result is that this one planet produces 34 food.

Of course, having the time to build this up required relative peace to be the norm which is the subject of this dev journal.

[h2]Leave me alone[/h2]
One of the most common questions we get is how do you keep everyone from going to war with you? Can you play the game without having to build up a huge military. The answer is, yes and…maybe.

I’m playing as a benevolent civilization. This means my polar opposite civilizations (malevolent) will be inclined to go to war with me. If I were playing as pragmatic, they would also not like me but they are somewhat less likely to pull the trigger on going to war with a pragmatic civilization versus one that is their opposite.

So what’s the key to getting them to leave me alone?

[h2]Relationship factors[/h2]



Here is the Drengin. The biggest two things helping me with them are the fact we’re trading with them and they are relatively far away.

[h3]Tip #1: Trade with them [/h3]
When I play as a peaceful civ, I am careful to trade as much as I can. You do take a hit due to trading with their enemies but it’s still a big benefit.

Trade helps in so many other areas too. For example, the more you trade, the less easy of a target you are since they really want your money.

[h3]Tip #2: Treaties[/h3]


Make sure you are setting up treaties with them.

[h3]Tip #3: Financial Aid / Tribute[/h3]


You can give tribute to civilizations (give them money) which will make them happy.

[h3]Tip #4: Don’t be an easy target[/h3]
If a bear is chasing after you and your friends, you only need to be faster than the slowest friend. You don’t need a big military to keep from being attacked. But if you are absolutely defenseless then you are inviting conquest.

[h3]Tip #5: Use Diplomats[/h3]


If you have trained any diplomats, you can use them on the powerful civilizations that you want to leave you alone. You don’t need them to love you, you just need them to hate someone else more.

[h3]Tip #6: Build up your diplomatic skills[/h3]
There are certain planetary improvements and technologies that give your civilization more diplomatic points. Your increased skills will cause other civilizations to like you more.

[h3]Tip #7: Spy with Freighters[/h3]
A lot of players will try to keep an eye on what other civilizations are doing by building starbases and sensor ships. But these can sometimes cause other civilizations to consider them trespassers. But freighters don’t have that issue.

Instead, design freighters that have great sensor ranges. Make sure you get an open borders treaty with them.



Hopefully these tips will help you maintain a galactic peace…or at least long enough to either ascend or get a diplomatic victory!

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